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Title: Tangled Threads of Revolution
Author: James Pendlebury
Date: 2009
Language: en
Topics: anarcho-communist, class, class struggle, Italy, organization, platform, review, revolution, Zabalaza, Organizational Dualism
Source: Retrieved on July 6, 2009 from http://www.anarkismo.net/article/13342
Notes: “Anarchist Communists: a Question of Class” is a theoretical position paper of the FdCA of Italy and a key contemporary exposition of the principles of anarchist communism — the principles of, among other organisations, the FdCA and southern Africa’s ZACF. This critical review of “Question of Class” appeared in abridged form (for space reasons) in Zabalaza #10 (April 2009). The review is now published in full.  Question of Class can be read online at http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen/index.htm

James Pendlebury

Tangled Threads of Revolution

Reflections on the FdCA’s “Anarchist Communists: a Question of

Class”

Anarchism is not an abstract ideal of freedom springing out of the brain

of some intellectual. It is not a dream of utopia unconnected to

reality. It is a movement of the exploited workers, beginning in their

daily material struggles; and its history is marked by a sustained link

between anarchist theory and the continuing struggles of mass working

class movements.

This was the perspective of Mikhail Bakunin, the founding theorist of

anarchism, whose revolutionary ideas grew out of his experience in the

19^(th) century working class movement of the First International. It

was the perspective of the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian

Communists, drafted by Nestor Makhno and other Ukrainian and Russian

anarchists in response to the defeat of the Russian Revolution by the

Bolsheviks. It is the perspective taken by long-standing ZACF militants

Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt in their two-volume history of

anarchism, Counter-power. (The first volume, Black Flame: the

Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, was published

by AK Press in February 2009.) And it is the perspective of the ZACF’s

Italian comrades of the Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (Federation

of Anarchist Communists, or FdCA), in their excellent theoretical

position paper “Anarchist Communists: a Question of Class”.

The purpose of the paper is to explain the main principles of the

anarchist tradition to which both the FdCA and the ZACF belong, and to

locate this tradition within the context of anarchist and revolutionary

movements. Ours is a tradition rooted in class struggle: its aim is for

the working class to grow from fighting for improvements in the

conditions of our daily lives to the point where we can collectively

overthrow both capitalism and the state, and establish a society of free

equals. In keeping with this, it is a tradition committed to

organisation: not authoritarian, hierarchical organisation, like that of

the state or of those who wish to take control of the state; but

self-managing, federated organisation, where decisions are made from

below. So far, these principles are those that have been favoured by the

majority in the anarchist movement throughout its history.

What distinguishes our tradition — the tradition of the ZACF and the

FdCA — is a commitment to what the paper calls “organisational dualism”,

also known, following the Latin American anarchists, as “especifismo”.

We believe that two organisations are needed to build the revolution.

One is the mass organisation of the popular classes, which, as the FdCA

says, “aims to wring as much as possible out of the bosses in order to

win greater wealth for the exploited classes they represent. They try to

satisfy the needs of the workers who are being continually squeezed by

their adversary, the bosses.” This organisation can go on to overthrow

the bosses, emancipate the workers and establish a free and equal

society. Only the workers can free the workers.

But because the mass organisation is built to defend the immediate

material needs of all the workers, it cannot be ideologically unified.

Very few members of unions and popular social movements today are

committed to overthrowing capitalism or the state. Hence another

organisation is needed: the political organisation, or specific

organisation. This, the FdCA says, is “made up of the members of the

mass organisation who share the same theory, the same strategy and

similar ideas on tactics. The task of this organisation is, on the one

hand, to be the depository for the class memory and, on the other hand,

to elaborate a common strategy which can ensure the linking of all the

struggles by the class and which can stimulate and guide.” Unlike

Marxist-Leninist groups, an anarchist political organisation does not

substitute itself for the working class or try to give them orders, and

it certainly does not try to seize state power on their behalf. It has

no authority within the mass organisation other than rational persuasion

of the worth of its ideas by example; its role in it is to “produce

analyses, strategies and credible proposals. Its members must gain the

trust of the workers and distinguish themselves by the clarity of their

ideas and their ability to promote convincing struggles which should, if

conditions so permit, be victorious.” And it can warn of the dangers of

other tendencies whose ideas and programmes are likely to lead to

defeat.

Makhno and his comrades defended the principle of organisational dualism

in the Organisational Platform. They emphasised several key features of

the specific organisation, which have been adopted by the FdCA and the

ZACF: notably theoretical unity, tactical unity and collective

responsibility. Curiously, there have been anarchist political

organisations that do not adhere to these principles — the

“organisations of synthesis”, which, in some cases, “accept members who

declare themselves to be Anarchists, without any further specification”.

As the FdCA makes clear, this leads to an extraordinary mish-mash of

ideas. How can the specific organisation “elaborate a common strategy”

if its members are pulling in a range of different directions?

Theoretical unity, the FdCA notes, “is never complete” — but there must

be enough of it to assure a common strategy. Otherwise what is the point

of having a specific organisation?

Because of the importance of the Platform as a statement of our

principles, supporters of a distinct, theoretically and strategically

unified specific organisation are often referred to as Platformists. The

name is popular as an insult among our opponents, but I, for one, would

happily accept it. Nonetheless, we should not make the mistake of

thinking that the idea of organisational dualism originated with the

Platform: in fact, this work is a restatement of far older anarchist

principles. It is a strength of the FdCA’s paper that it traces

organisational dualism back to Bakunin, and to the clearly stated

principles and practices of his specific organisation, the Alliance for

Social Democracy, within the First International. The founding theorist

of class struggle anarchism was also the founding theorist of our own

tendency; and the FdCA paper begins with a brief discussion of his

importance, proceeding to two other key theorists, Luigi Fabbri and

Camillo Berneri (while recognising the importance of others, such as

Makhno and Errico Malatesta, who belonged to or were close to our

tradition).

The bright red strand of class struggle

The paper then gives a brief account of three key events in the history

of anarchist and working class movements, the Paris Commune of 1871, the

Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921 and the Spanish Revolution of

1936–1939. (The FdCA’s treatment of Spain raises complex questions,

which I cannot engage with here. I believe the authors have not taken

sufficient account of the weaknesses of the Spanish anarchist movement.

The ZACF will elaborate on this point in a separate commentary.) But the

real theoretical meat of the paper begins in the third chapter, which

deals with the principles of class struggle. It notes that, while our

movement begins not with abstract ideas but with material struggles, a

movement that seeks to change the world needs an analysis of its

situation. Here we are introduced to the method of historical

materialism, with a statement of its principles by Karl Marx and

Friedrich Engels:

“The first historical action is therefore the creation of the means to

satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself, and this is

precisely a historical action, a fundamental condition of any history,

which still today, as millennia ago, must be accomplished every day and

every hour simply to keep man [sic] alive [...]. In every conception of

history therefore, the first point is that this fundamental fact be

observed in all its facets and that its place be recognised.”

It is another strength of the paper that it is equally forthright in

acknowledging Marx’s valuable contributions and in exposing his errors.

The FdCA elaborates the point:

Historical materialism is therefore a methodology for the analysis of

historical facts which can establish the primary cause for these in the

evolution of the productive structure of society, in the development of

relationships and forces of production; every event that history

presents us with is therefore not the result of ideas and the clash

between different conceptions of life, but the result of the economic

interests at stake — direct and indirect manifestations of the

relationships which establish themselves with human society in the

production of those goods which are necessary for the satisfaction of

our historically and socially determined material needs. History is not

the history of ideas. Ideas are backdrops created by real movements that

can themselves, however, influence the movements. History is the history

of the antagonisms created by the production relationships. It is the

history of the struggle between the classes.

This gives the background for the introduction of the concept of class;

but here I have a small quibble. The FdCA joins the Marxists and “the

entire radical left” in defining classes as “the social groups that can

be identified on the basis of their position in the cycle of production

and the distribution of goods”. But what does this imply? Factory

workers are engaged in production; railway workers and dock workers are

engaged in transport, which is part of distribution. These are different

positions in the cycle. But I have never heard anyone say railway

workers and dock workers are a different class from factory workers.

Throughout the history of class struggle against capitalism, all these

workers have stood side by side against the common enemy, without

worrying about different positions in the cycle of production.

This is a small quibble because the real issue becomes clear in the same

paragraph. What is fundamental to class is who controls the cycle of

production. The capitalists are in control; the workers “own only their

ability to work, which they sell to the bosses”. The FdCA notes that

anarchists recognise the importance of other classes, such as the

peasants, who do not have to sell their labour but are nonetheless

exploited and dominated; we believe, contrary to the Marxists, that all

such classes have a common interest in overthrowing capitalism and a

part to play in the struggle. But power is fundamental. Not that power

alone defines class: there are hierarchies that are not class

structures, because they are not linked to the means of production and

do not allow those at the top to systematically exploit those at the

bottom for their material benefit. Classes are not defined by hierarchy

alone, nor by “position in the cycle” alone, but by the combination of

domination and exploitation. The FdCA clearly understands this; perhaps

the problematic sentence merely reflects awkward phrasing or even a

failure of translation from the Italian. In any event, the paper makes

it clear that exploitation and domination render the dominant and

subordinate classes irreconcilable; and in a capitalist system, there is

plenty of scope for confrontation between them, which we believe the

working class can ultimately win.

Marx’s tangles

After some discussion of this confrontation, and of the objectives of

the working class — a society of free equals, a communist society, based

on the principle “from each according to ability, to each according to

need” — the paper turns to a discussion of our differences with other

working class movements, and, in particular, a critique of the Marxists.

Many of these differences centre on the question of the state; and, as

the FdCA points out, the difference reflects a serious failure of

Marxist analysis. This point is illustrated with a historical irony:

In 1868, when the Bakuninist International Alliance of Socialist

Democracy applied to join the International Workingmen’s Association

(IWMA), Marx ... requested a change in its statute: with heavy irony he

pointed out that the phrase “equalisation of the classes” was ambiguous

and that it would have to be corrected to read “abolition of the

classes”. Bakunin agreed that the phrase was improper and agreed with

the proposed change which better explained the goal of the revolution.

But the error committed by Marx and Engels in 1848 [in the Communist

Manifesto] was much greater ...

What, in fact, can be meant by the proletariat constituting itself “as

the dominant class”? First of all, if the proletariat has taken power,

then the revolution or the change of hands with the bourgeoisie will

already have taken place and as the aim of the revolution is, according

to everyone, the abolition of classes ... the struggle of the

proletariat becomes its own dissolution as a class together with all

other classes, the bourgeoisie heading the list. In second place, class

distinction is not a matter of ethics, somatics or ethnicity, but is

based on the different positions which the individual members of a

society have with regard to property relationships. At the moment in

which individual property is abolished, to be substituted by the

collective ownership of production, distribution and consumption, there

is an effective end to all class-based social organisation.

Marx knew perfectly well that the revolution aimed at abolishing class.

He knew that class was a matter of production relationships: thus, if

the working class seizes the means of production, overturning existing

production relationships to establish equality, class is thereby

abolished. Talking of the proletariat becoming the dominant class is, as

the FdCA says, a “non-sense”; but that is just what Marx did in the

Manifesto, in one of the great statements of his theory and programme.

The FdCA points out that Marxists have defended the need for a workers’

state by pointing to the continuing threat of the enemies of the

revolution, against which the workers must defend themselves; and by

referring to the need to organise production, which Marxists identify

with centralisation. But the paper replies to these points by examining

the history of the Russian Revolution. It points out that contrary to

Marxist views and practices, Makhno’s non-statist popular army was the

most successful force in defending the revolution; and that centralised

state control of production led to the return of oppression and

exploitation, and to the alienation of workers from the revolution.

Contrary to Marxist predictions, the “workers’ state” did not “wither

away when it was no longer needed”. Instead, as was “foreseen by

Bakunin, [Piotr] Kropotkin, Malatesta, Fabbri and many other libertarian

thinkers”, the FdCA points out that the state “reproduced the

exploitation that it was based on”. I might add that this was capitalist

exploitation: production continued to be for monetary exchange rather

than for need, and the Communist Party bureaucrats and bosses

accumulated capital through profit, driving continuing expansion of

production under their own control, through the exploitation of the

workers.

This is an example of the possibility of “superstructure” (in this case,

the state) affecting “structure” (the forces and relations of

production). As the FdCA points out in an appendix, Marxists tend to

maintain that superstructure totally depends on structure: hence, once

the relations of exploitation are abolished, the state must wither away.

But we say historical materialism does not rule out superstructure

feeding back on structure: the state reproduces exploitation, and behind

this we can see the authoritarian ideas that promoted the restoration of

the state. Again, a vanguard party that sets itself up to represent and

direct the exploited masses, aiming to take power on their behalf, will,

in one way or another, be separated from the workers and integrated into

the structures of the bourgeois state. The struggle, as the FdCA says,

must be a social struggle, waged by the workers themselves through

direct action in their daily lives, not a political struggle, waged by

the representatives of the workers in the authoritarian state structures

of the class enemy.

The rigid distinction between structure and superstructure is just one

example of Marxists’ oversimplistic determinism: there are other,

related errors. For instance, Marxists tend to see history as

progressing in a predictable way from one economic stage to the next.

Communism is to follow capitalism, and cannot be achieved without

passing through capitalism; hence, during the rise of capitalism, it is

to be seen as progressive, and those who resist it as backward. It is

for this reason that Marxists, unlike anarchists and contrary to the

evidence of history, tend to write off peasants as potential

revolutionaries. Not that they don’t have a point. As the FdCA says, we

can agree with the Marxists that “the capitalist organisation of labour

concentrates large masses of workers into the same physical space, both

for production and in daily life, easing the way for political

aggregations”. But the paper adds that other factors “have their role to

play: the growth in education (not so much regarding schooling, but in

the circulation of ideas), which is dragged along by labour once

liberated from feudalism; an idea of social justice which emerges from

the mists of impatience which have always been produced in every society

which is marked by deep inequality; finally, utopia — the embodiment of

a less unfair world. The Marxists would say these are superstructural

factors (or idealistic, or worse still, petit-bourgeois), but

nonetheless of great importance.”

History is not a straightforward matter of the material conditions

determining everything else. If you think it is, it can be expected that

you will neglect the danger of the “superstructural” state as a force

promoting exploitation in its own right. If you think of history as just

one stage after another, you may find it easy to regard the overthrow of

capitalists by workers as similar to the previous overthrow of

aristocrats by capitalists — and one gets the feeling that this is

exactly what Marx does, that his idea of the “workers’ state” draws

something from the bourgeois takeover of the state and use of it against

the aristocracy. By examining the state as a force with some level of

independence, we can understand the dangers of the Marxist conception.

But it is only fair to point out — as the FdCA does — that some Marxist

tendencies (“Luxemburgists, Bordighists, Council Communists, etc”)

equally reject the conquest of state power.

Threads of anarchy?

Having taken care of the Marxists, the FdCA turns, in its final chapter,

to distinctions within the anarchist movement. It identifies various

tendencies: Individualists, Educationists, anti-organisationists

(referred to as Anarcho-Communists), Insurrectionists,

Anarcho-Syndicalists and our own tendency of Anarchist Communists.

(There are also the Libertarian Communists, discussed in an appendix.

The FdCA applies this term to a movement that has arisen since the 1960s

and has been particularly important in Italy: a movement that is

influenced by anarchism but also takes up “elements of Marxist analysis

... such as the inevitability of the fall of capitalism once it reached

its highest stage of development, the automatic nature of the struggles

with regard to the economic phase, and a view of the current crisis as

being Capital’s final crisis”. However, the paper regards this as a

recent development, saying “Libertarian Communism” was “synonymous with

‘Anarchist Communism’ ... until the 1940s”.)

In considering the meaning of all these strange words, it is worth

bearing in mind a question that has caused much confusion in histories

of anarchism: What do we mean by the term “anarchist”? Who can be

considered an anarchist? The FdCA paper, like most other works on

anarchism, fails to tackle this question directly; this, I will argue,

leads to weaknesses in its classification. By contrast, Van der Walt and

Schmidt take the question very seriously in Counter-power. In seeking a

path through the maze of strange words and odd ideas, I will draw

extensively on concepts developed in their work.

To begin with, it will not assist us to give the name “anarchist” to

whoever chooses to claim it for themselves. Too many people with too

many different ideas and practices have seen fit to do so; letting them

have their way will not help us to understand whether they actually have

anything in common. It is this something in common that we must seek. As

a first attempt, we might identify “anarchism” with opposition to the

state, or to hierarchical authority in general. But this, I maintain,

fails to capture key aspects of the way the word is used. Marxists are

not generally identified as anarchists; but Marxists do, after all, want

the state to go away eventually! As the FdCA points out, we can agree

with the Marxists on “the type of society which it is intended to

realise”; the difference relates to methods of getting there, and how

different social and historical analysis informs different methods. And

once we leave the Marxists off our list of “anarchists”, can we find

anything in common among all the remaining anti-statists?

Following Schmidt and Van der Walt, I propose to return to the approach

of Bakunin and Makhno — which, as I have said, is also the approach of

the FdCA, although the final chapter of its paper falls short in certain

respects. I note that there is, after all, a movement of the oppressed

classes, of great historical importance, that began with Bakunin and the

First International, and has remained pretty consistent in its ideas and

practices. A movement based on class struggle, on direct action, on the

liberation of the workers by the workers, organised federally,

horizontally, directly-democratically for this purpose, aiming at the

destruction of private property, of capitalism and the state, and at the

establishment of a society of free equals. It is this movement that

historically gave currency to the name “anarchism”: words and ideas,

after all, are shaped by history and by material circumstances. By

looking at where tendencies stand in relation to the ideas and practices

of this movement, we can find a way of saying who is an anarchist and

who isn’t.

To begin with, let us turn this light on those who the FdCA designates

as Individualists — those influenced by the ideas of Max Stirner. Here

is what the paper says about them:

The basic idea ... was that the measure of freedom was equal to the

amount of the individual’s independence, which showed a total lack of

regard for the fact that Man [sic] is a social animal. All Man’s

achievements ... were obtained only thanks to human society. They are

the fruit of billions upon billions of anonymous contributions to the

creation of the well-being and evolution of the species. Humankind today

lives in such a thick web of relations between all its past and present

members, that the total freedom of one isolated being as a single

individual is a philosophical category which is totally removed from

reality. Starting with this improbable supposition, the individualists

began to cut themselves off from all social groupings and to despise the

masses (whom they thought slavishly obeyed power) and ended up

considering Anarchism as a fight against authority and the State and not

as a struggle for a egalitarian society.

Certainly not a theory that has anything to do with class struggle!

Indeed, this passage underlines an important point about the working

class anarchist movement: our ideas and practices only make sense on the

assumption that human beings are, indeed, social animals, not isolated

atomic independent individuals — an idea that is as completely absurd as

the FdCA says it is. This point was made by Bakunin and has been

reiterated by many anarchist theorists. And it is hardly surprising, as

the FdCA points out, that we find “anarcho-individualists” and

“anarcho-capitalists”, influenced by these ideas, defending capitalism

and the freedom to exploit against any state restrictions that might

somehow hinder exploitation. If you refuse to recognise the depth of

social interconnectedness, if you refuse to see that your own well-being

is tied to that of others, why not just go out and exploit everyone else

for your own enrichment, and fight anyone who tries to stop you?

Even so, as the FdCA points out, some Individualists “have remained

actively militant among the proletariat”; some have identified or

associated with the historical anarchist movement. Neither ideas nor

material conditions can determine exactly what every individual will do;

ideas and practices are often confused; the world is a messy place. But

even if some “anarcho-individualists” have in some sense been part of

the anarchist movement, there is nothing in common between Individualist

ideas and anarchist ideas, or between the practices that are naturally

associated with these two ways of thinking. If “anarcho-individualism”

is a movement at all, it is not an anarchist movement; it does not

belong, ideologically or historically, with a collective class struggle

movement embodying an appreciation of the social nature of humanity. And

the same goes for the Educationists, those who hold “that education can

suffice to change man’s nature, even before changing the material

conditions of existence”. Such a view is incompatible with historical

materialism and contradicts the practices of class struggle anarchism.

Again, there may be people associated with the anarchist movement who

hold such views and/or act in a way compatible with such views; but

there could just as well be such individuals outside. Educationism is no

more an anarchist movement than Individualism is. (See Appendix A)

The FdCA’s discussion of anti-organisationists raises trickier

questions. We may first ask what could be the motivation for a rejection

of organisation. I suggest that one obvious cause for such views is

simple confusion, and that there is one very obvious source of such

confusion, derived from the workings and from the dominant ideologies of

the oppressive societies we live in: the idea that organisation is

necessarily authoritarian and hierarchical. From this view one can

reason in two ways. The defender of authority says: organisation implies

hierarchical authority; organisation is necessary; therefore

hierarchical authority is necessary. The anti-organisationist says:

organisation implies hierarchical authority; hierarchical authority is

destructive; therefore organisation is destructive. Anarchists reject

both these arguments, for we deny that organisation needs to be either

authoritarian or hierarchical. Of course, the confusions are seldom as

clearly stated as I have put them; it is the nature of confusion to be

confused. But such ways of thinking may have a lot to do with a lot of

anti-organisationism. (It is up to anarchists to show how organisation

can work without hierarchical authority — but history furnishes us with

abundant evidence, and we have risen to the challenge so successfully

that I need not elaborate here.)

It is worth noting that many supposed anti-organisationists like Luigi

Galleani, were in fact organised, albeit into small conspiratorial

cells. It beggars the imagination why such cells, should they be agreed,

not unite into wider anarchist federations of like mind.

However, the anti-organisationism with which the FdCA is concerned —

“Anarcho-Communism” — has a different root. Before discussing this, I

must note that the paper’s terminology lends itself to confusion. How am

I going to remember that “Anarcho-Communism” involves opposition to

organisation and that “Anarchist Communism” supports it, with definite

ideas on how it should work? In Italian the terms are, respectively,

“anarco-comunismo” and “comunismo anarchico”, with the word order

reversed for the different tendencies; but it still seems odd to give

such different traditions names that are built by combining the same

pair of words! I must suppose that these usages are fairly standard in

Italy, and that Italian working class militants will look beyond

etymology and know what movements and ideas are being discussed. Words

are shaped by history; but I have to say that this choice of words is

not one I could recommend for myself, or for anyone who does not share

the experiences that have made these words standard in the Italian

movement. To me, “anarcho-communism” and “anarchist communism” both

suggest communism combined with anarchism. And this logical

understanding, alas, has almost nothing to do with the Italian usage.

I have identified anarchism as a historical movement of the working

class, aimed at the destruction by the workers themselves of oppressive

and exploitative structures. What, then, is communism? I must note that

the original use of the word was — is — in relation to the world we are

fighting for: a society in which production is run according to the

principle “from each according to ability, to each according to need”;

hence a society without exploitation, without private property, money or

exchange. Communism is commonly contrasted, for instance, with

Collectivism, which the FdCA identifies as being based on the principle

“to each according to labour”. I am not sure whether this is an adequate

characterisation of collectivism, whether the term is always strictly

used in this way; but at any rate, it is usually taken to refer to a

productive system that, while not communist, is not supposed to be

exploitative. (The word “socialism” is even more confusing. It is

sometimes taken in contrast with communism, or, as the FdCA does, with

both communism and collectivism; at other times it is used as a vague

umbrella term for any non-exploitative system, implying that communism

is a kind of socialism — as we communists will tell you, it is the best

kind.)

Naturally, all these words are shaped by history and by material

conditions. It is no surprise that the communist principle, which is

thoroughly opposed to exploitation, has won most support in the

revolutionary movement of the exploited; indeed, there would be some

point in saying that this movement is the communist movement. But the

specific application of the term has changed over time. As the FdCA

notes, although Marx used the word “communism” from the 1840s, “it was

the anarchists who first adopted the term on a wide scale ... around the

end of the 19^(th) century”. At this time, the Marxists favoured the

term “Social Democracy”: their most powerful presence was in the German

Social Democratic Party, whose objective was to gain control of the

bourgeois state through elections. As a result, the term “Social

Democracy” — previously used by Bakunin in the name of his Alliance! —

came to stand for class collaboration, for the futile effort by

movements based in the working class to reach some kind of compromise

with the exploiter.

The FdCA adds: “It was only after the Russian Revolution of October 1917

that Marxist parties all over the world returned to the use of the

adjective communist. By that stage, though, Anarchist Communists had

already been using the term for around half a century as a synonym of

class-struggle Anarchism.” And when the Bolsheviks took the name, its

meaning became twisted: it has come to stand for the highly

authoritarian, centralised, exploitative and repressive states built by

Vladimir Lenin and his imitators, which have nothing in common with

communism in its original meaning. To be fair, the Leninists tended not

to claim that their states were actually communist; as Marxist

determinists, they regarded them as a stage on the road to communism;

and it was in keeping with their own commitment to this great goal — a

commitment that in some cases may actually have been sincere — that they

designated their organisations as Communist Parties. But to call

Bolshevik Russia communist is to forget what the word always meant, to

lose sight of what communism is, and, indeed, of what capitalism is,

since I have pointed out that Bolshevik Russia was capitalist. Much

effort has been put into taking the word “communism” away from the

revolutionary workers’ movement. “Socialism” has become more confused

still: today it will be claimed by almost anyone who is even slightly

uncomfortable with the capitalist “free market”. But the word

“communism”, at least, is one that we should take back. Just as we aim

in the future to expropriate the expropriators of our labour, so, even

now, we can expropriate the expropriators of our words.

Disentangling Kropotkin

But what shall we do with these words once we take them back? Let me

return to the FdCA’s efforts. The paper describes the views of the

“Anarcho-Communists” as follow:

Anarchism was no longer the goal of the conscious efforts on the part of

men and women to organise themselves for their collective happiness, but

only the final and teleologically predetermined stage in historical

development (as we shall see, somewhat like the dialectic materialism of

Stalinist orthodoxy which stemmed from the same positivist vein). The

result of all this ... was that all forms of organisation are not only

unnecessary (given that the course of events cannot be seriously

influenced) but actually dangerous, as they represent an obstruction for

the free flow of the process’ spontaneity and impede the appearance of

the final stage in the development of humanity ... As a result of their

deterministic vision, Anarcho-Communists place no importance in the

class struggle. Furthermore, they consider even the existence of classes

to be an unproven fact, if not some Marxist invention.

I must note that the term “teleology” refers to the view that history

tends towards a definite goal: in the case of the “Anarcho-Communists”

(and, for that matter, those of orthodox Marxists and Leninists, who

also take a teleological view) this goal would be a free, stateless

communist society. A wonderful goal, to be sure; but the FdCA’s highly

pertinent point is that if you think the world is going there anyway, it

may not be that much incentive to work towards it. (Alternatively, it

may discourage you from thinking about what really needs to be done to

get there, which, I suspect, is part of why Marx was so ready to

incorporate the absurdity of a “workers’ state” into his historical

theory.) The picture the FdCA paints of “Anarcho-Communists” is a

picture of political complacency, of expecting the mighty force of

History to do all your work for you.

The paper attributes this confusion to Kropotkin, a leading Russian

anarchist thinker at the end of the 19^(th) century. But I must submit

that this is somewhat unfair. Certainly there is a very strong

teleological element in Kropotkin’s thought — a teleology that differs

from Marx’s teleology, most obviously by rejecting any positive role for

the state. But such teleology is not unusual among anarchists of that

time. It can be seen in Bakunin, particularly in his more philosophical

writings, such as God and the State. Although the FdCA is correct to say

teleological thinking can lead to political errors, Bakunin and others

show that it need not automatically do so. And with Kropotkin, it did

not — at least not so obviously or to such an extent as the FdCA

suggests. Far from “placing no importance in the class struggle”,

Kropotkin was deeply committed to it. His book The Conquest of Bread

opens with a penetrating critique of capitalism and moves on to a

detailed discussion of how the workers can realise their material needs

in a revolutionary situation — beginning with the need to expropriate

the expropriators. The writer of this book was not one to dismiss class

struggle, and shows no signs of being one to dismiss organisation. (See

Appendix B for more on Kropotkin’s positions)

It is true that later in his life, Kropotkin grew to be disconnected

from the mass anarchist movement, to the point that on the outbreak of

World War 1, he decisively broke with anarchist principles by backing

British and French imperialism. But the FdCA makes no reference to any

such changing views. It traces the ideas of “Anarcho-Communists” to

Kropotkin and identifies him quite straightforwardly as their precursor

and founder. Indeed, it is easy to see how teleological

anti-organisationists could turn to Kropotkin for support for their

views — but in so doing, they utterly fail to take note of the depth of

his thought. And I am sorry to say that in relegating Kropotkin to the

“Anarcho-Communist” ranks, the FdCA does the same.

Certainly teleological — and other — anti-organisationist views can be

found in many individuals associated with the anarchist movement. But

such views, particularly when taken to the extreme of dismissing class

struggle as the FdCA describes them, are clearly in conflict with the

views and practices of the anarchist movement, as I and my ZACF comrades

have analysed it. Individualists and Educationists may call themselves

anarchists, and associate with the anarchist movement, but that does not

make them anarchists, and it does not make their tendencies anarchist

tendencies. (See Appendix A) And the same goes for “Anarcho-Communists”.

The fact that they trace their views to Kropotkin — or to their own

distorted picture of Kropotkin — does not make them anarchists, and I

won’t call them anarchists. But if everyone knows them by that name in

Italy, perhaps there’s no avoiding it.

The FdCA notes a similarity between the “Kropotkinists” and the

Insurrectionist Anarchists, a tendency that gained prominence towards

the end of the 19^(th) century. The paper explains:

The hope was that the spread of violent acts directed at the pompous

bourgeoisie of the period would provide an example which would rapidly

be imitated thereby transforming the insurrectionary spark into an

immense revolutionary blaze. This was the period of the bloody acts of

the likes of François-Claudius Köhingstein (better known as Ravachol),

Bonnot, Émile Henry and many others. France, in fact, though at the

centre of the insurrectionalist wave was also the place where

class-struggle Anarchist militants (Émile Pouget, Fernand Pelloutier,

Pierre Monatte, and others) found a way out through the formation of the

“Bourses du Travail” and the syndicates and thereby brought Anarchism

back to its natural element, the proletariat, which led to a new and

profound method of struggle and organisation. Despite this, there are

still today those who as a result of a childish theoretical

simplification, hold that gains made by the unions are ephemeral and who

continue to preach the idea of propaganda by the deed. They are mistaken

twice over. Firstly, when they think that syllogisms can cancel history

— in other words they believe, with purely abstract reasoning, that as

long as capitalism exists there can be no improvement in the living

conditions of the masses even where there have been labour struggles.

Secondly, they are under the illusion that some external example can be

more attractive and convincing than long, tiring educational activity

within the day-to-day struggles.

The similarity to “Anarcho-Communists” lies in the dismissal of

large-scale class struggle under capitalism, and in the substitution of

abstract general historical principles for the hard work of analysis and

organisation. But there are differences. Insurrectionists, after all, do

engage in acts of struggle against the bourgeoisie, and they do organise

themselves — even if we agree that organisation in small groups to carry

out bloody acts of revenge is not, in fact, an effective way of building

the revolutionary struggle. And historically, the insurrectionist

tendency very clearly belongs to the broad anarchist movement. The FdCA

reinforces the link between insurrectionism and “Anarcho-Communism” by

pointing out that Kropotkin supported the strategy of propaganda by the

deed — but this, again, is unfair to Kropotkin, since many other leading

anarchists, not all of them followers of his views, were present at the

congress that adopted this strategy in 1881. Insurrectionism enjoyed a

great deal of support within the anarchist movement for some time; many

leading anarchists moved towards it, only to see its failure and then

move away from it. Indeed, Van der Walt and Schmidt identify

insurrectionism as one distinct tendency within the anarchist movement,

a minority tendency, in contrast to the majority tendency of “mass

anarchism”, of broad-based class struggle movements, which is the

approach favoured by the ZACF and the FdCA. In fact, Kropotkin was one

of the first leading anarchists to move away from insurrectionist

propaganda by the deed, and towards organised mass anarchism.

How many threads?

Within the mass anarchist movement, a tendency is commonly drawn between

“anarchist communism” and “anarcho-syndicalism” — but there seems to be

little clarity on what divides them. I will not go into the subtleties,

but note how the FdCA points to some genuine distinctions:

Anarcho-Syndicalists of various types and Revolutionary Syndicalists lay

their trust in the spontaneous evolution of the proletarian masses and

that accordingly if the labour unions are left alone, sooner or later

they will arrive at the decisive clash with the boss class. Malatesta

already opposed this idea, held by Monatte, in 1907 at the International

Congress of Amsterdam. He clarified how the proletariat’s associations

for resistance would inevitably slide into reformism, thus blurring

sight of the goals ... The historically proven decline of all unions

which were born revolutionary (starting with Monatte’s own CGT), has led

some Anarcho-Syndicalists to seek the answer not in political

organisation, but in the creation of unions which are based on a

pre-determined revolutionary idea. In other words, to create unions

which are exclusively composed of conscious, revolutionary elements. The

result is a strange mix of mass organisation and political organisation

which is basically an organisation of anarchists who set themselves up

to do union work. In this way the obstacle has not been removed, but

avoided, as the link which connects the masses to the revolutionary

strategy is missing, unless of course it happens to be the resurrection

of the idea of an external example which contaminates the masses by some

process of osmosis.

It is certainly true that many who identify themselves as

“anarcho-syndicalists” have fallen into one or the other of the

above-mentioned errors; but although these ways of drawing the

distinction are quite widespread, I am not at all sure if they are

universal. I am not sure if everyone who calls themselves

“anarcho-syndicalist” would reject the need for a specific political

organisation. The ZACF tends to follow the usage of the Platform:

“Whereas communism, i.e. the free society of equal workers, is the goal

of the anarchist struggle, syndicalism, i.e. the revolutionary movement

of industrial workers based on trades, is but one of the forms of the

revolutionary class struggle.” But we recognise that there are a variety

of views on the role of the unions in the struggle.

Identifying these different views with particular tendencies is a lot

trickier. Let us look at our own tendency, the tendency of the ZACF and

the FdCA, which our comrades identify as “Anarchist Communism”. Their

paper rightly identifies Bakunin as the founder of this tendency; but

also notes (in chapter 3) that he was a collectivist rather than a

communist! (Bakunin may have been uncomfortable with communism partly

because in his day it was associated with Marxist authoritarianism; it

was only later that a fully communist anarchist theory was developed.

And as the FdCA notes, his writing is unsystematic and scattered: it may

not be easy to tell where exactly he stood on the organisation of

production in a free society.) It seems odd to call your tendency

“communist” when its founder appears not to have been a communist. Here

again, there is some historical precedent: many in our tendency have,

indeed, identified themselves as anarchist communists; and many

organisations of our tendency today use the term in their names,

including the the FdCA and the ZACF. But it still seems odd to use this

name for our tendency, when (a) it includes non-communists, notably its

founder; and (b) there are anarchists who are communists but do not

belong to our tendency. Why not identify ourselves as organisational

dualists, especifistas, or, for some of us — perhaps the more

theoretically and practically rigorous, perhaps old-fashioned —

platformists?

This is one example of the difficulty in drawing distinctions within the

mass anarchist movement. Can we come up with a really neat

classification incorporating such questions as who is a communist and

who isn’t; who doesn’t want to engage in workplace struggles, who does,

and in what way; who rejects a specific organisation, who supports it,

and of those who support it, who prefers an organisation of tendency and

who (like Volin) opts for an organisation of synthesis? I doubt if this

is truly possible, or if it would throw much light on the history of

anarchism, on how the mass movement has interacted with the system of

production. Hence, Van der Walt and Schmidt stick with insurrectionism

versus mass anarchism as the main distinction and do not try to draw

such messy and unfortunate lines as between, say, syndicalists and

communists. That is not to say there are no distinctive threads within

the tangle of the mass anarchist movement: clearly there are, and the

thread that runs from Bakunin to (among others) the ZACF and the FdCA is

one of them. (We like to think it is a particularly coherent and

important one.)

Conclusion: no need to get tied up

I have devoted much attention to the flaws in the FdCA’s classification

of anarchist tendencies; but the fact remains that the ideas that the

paper refers to are ideas that really exist, and are generally in need

of critique; and its criticisms are entirely on target. If the FdCA’s

map of the terrain is less than perfect (and whose map could not stand

some improvement?), this does not stop our comrades from directing their

fire with perfect accuracy at just the targets they need to hit. The

only significant misfiring is in the case of Kropotkin.

Nor is the discussion of anarchist tendencies confined to shooting down

confusionists: it includes important positive points. Among these, I

note the need for anarchists to defend certain roles of the state: the

welfare state, which enables “a minimum redistribution of wealth in

favour of the workers; as the result of decades of struggles they have

allowed the conflict to be regulated for the protection of the weakest”.

Not to say that the state should not be “abolished right from the first

moment of the revolution”, but to be aware in daily struggles of the

immediate needs of the working class. This is an important point for

many of the struggles in which the ZACF is engaged. As popular movements

in South Africa today fight for free housing, water and electricity, we

consistently call for the use of direct action in these struggles; but

we hope to achieve these things within capitalism, and we know that it

is only the state that can reasonably provide them.

Another important point — on which the ZACF has much to learn, notably

from the FdCA — is the need for a programme, for definite short-term and

medium-term objectives, based on a thorough analysis, including economic

analysis, of the existing situation. In this connection, the FdCA notes

the value of tactical and strategic alliances with militants of other

tendencies, pointing out: “Anarchist Communists are so sure of their

historical ends, of their strategy for obtaining them and of the steps

they must take today, that they do not fear any impure contact

contaminating them. On the contrary, they believe that they can

contaminate others.”

This is just one part of our comrades’ very thorough and deep analysis.

Much of this review has been devoted to weak points in their paper, and

more could be said on these; but far more still could be said on its

strong points. And on these, A Question of Class is best left to speak

for itself.

Appendices

A. REDEFINING ANARCHIST CURRENTS:

Michael Schmidt writes: “There is strangely, in the view of myself and

Lucien van der Walt, detailed in our book Black Flame: the Revolutionary

Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, no historically definable

“anarchist-communist” current at all. No doubt the WSM in Ireland, the

FdCA and others of our tendency would be surprised at this position, but

it has a solid grounding in historical fact: that “pure anarchist

communists” like Hatta Shuzo of Japan were in fact not anti-syndicalist

(merely recognised the limitations of the single, mass organisation

without the specific organisation, as did Errico Malatesta and others)

and in fact worked within the syndicalist movement to reunite the

“anarchist communist” Zenkoku Jiren with the “anarcho-syndicalist” Nihon

Jikyo. So if even the “purists” were not anti-syndicalist, and the

“anti-organisationists” like Luigi Galleani were in fact organised,

albeit on a smaller affinity-group scale, who is it in fact, that is

opposed to the mass line approach that the majority of the historical

anarchist movement adopted?

“Of the anarchists who can rightfully claim that title by their

revolutionary free-communist class orientation, the only ones who reject

the mass line are those who believe in the uselessness of reforms,

believing that the “revolutionary gymnasium” of union organising etc

only saps the workers’ strength through the infection of bourgeois

norms, and draws them into fatal compromises with the state, capital and

the elitist project (here the ZACF prefers the FdCA’s confidence that

revolutionary ideas can infect the class organisations instead).

Anarchist-insurrectionists find their solution to class mobilisation in

the precipitation of spontaneous and voluntary mass revolt by catalytic

deeds. Although this position comes close to some left-communist and

some council communist positions, there is nothing inherently

un-anarchist about their analysis, although just as the mass line can

succumb to reformism, so the insurgent line can succumb to

substitutionism.

“However, Lucien and I accepted that in many cases, anarchist insurgency

and guerrilla warfare took place not in isolation, but as the defensive

arms of mass popular organisations. Here we may give honourable mention

to the fighters of the Organización Popular Revolucionaria-33 (OPR-33)

in Uruguay which acted in defence of wildcat strikes by the CNT union

and other popular mobilisations against neo-fascist repression in

1971–1976, of Resistencia Libertaria (RL) in Argentina which defended

worker’s autonomy against the ultra-right which organised the murderous

Galtieri military coup in 1976, of the Movimiento Ibérica Libertaria

(MIL) which operated underground in Spain against the Francoist

dictatorship in 1971–1974, and of the Workers’ Liberation Group

(Shagila) of Iraq and Scream of the People (CHK) of Iran which defended

the factory soviets (shoras) and grassroots neighbourhood committees

(kommitehs) during the Iranian Revolution of 1978–1979. A more familiar

example to most would be the Los Solidarios group in Spain in the 1920s

was not merely running around assassinating people at whim, but that

they had been formed by the famed anarcho-syndicalist CNT union

federation as a secret, yet official, defensive arm responding to real

and deadly repression.

“Other than the anarchist-insurrectionists, there remains only the

“classless individualists” who, we of our tendency are all agreed, by

denying the social nature of humanity and the necessity for class

struggle for socialism-from-below, break with the foundations of

anarchism and are thus non-anarchist, while the “philosophical

educationists,” where they do not deny the class struggle, are simply

poor anarchists in that they have withdrawn from social activism. Thus

we say, “anarchist-communism” at base is simply a synonym for what today

is often called “social anarchism” and mostly historically adheres to

the mass line which includes syndicalist approaches.

“The only further distinction then becomes between “anarcho-syndicalism”

that defines specifically as anarchist (such as our comrades of the

CNT-France and others), which has the strength of recognising its

anarchist roots, but the weakness of not being able to embrace all

workers on the basis of economic commonality — because it is a mass

organisation trying to be at the same time a specific organisation, and

“revolutionary syndicalism” that does not define itself as anarchist

(the IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] and others), which has the

disadvantage that it will attract reformists and state-socialists into

its ranks, but the advantage that it can embrace all workers (although

the IWW often also suffers from the conundrum of trying to be sufficient

in itself without an affiliated specific anarchist organisation). Other

than that, there are also specific organisations that do see syndicalism

as inherently reformist and therefore a dead loss, but most are of our

tendency which see organisational dualism as crucial. This is the crux

of the argument between the International Workers’ Association (IWA) and

those of our tendency: the IWA sees syndicalism alone as sufficiently

revolutionary because their unions are specifically anarchist, while we

believe syndicalism should be non-specific because of the class nature

of trade unions, but as a result needs to be allied to specific

organisations which provide anarchist content. One of the determining

factors in which argument is correct is, crudely, the numbers: the IWA

declines while the tendency today represented in the organisations of

the anarkismo project and the unaffiliated syndicalist unions, grows.”

James Pendlebury comments: “There is a bit more to say about the

‘educationists’. The FdCA defines this supposed tendency as those who

hold ‘that education can suffice to change man’s nature, even before

changing the material conditions of existence’. That is, they deny class

struggle as a key factor in history. Schmidt allows for such a position,

but also emphasises those who ‘do not deny the class struggle [but] are

simply poor anarchists in that they have withdrawn from social

activism’. No doubt both these approaches have their adherents — and

there are probably those who sit somewhere in between. But the important

point, from the perspective of Schmidt, Van der Walt and myself, is that

neither approach can be legitimately regarded as a distinct anarchist

tendency.”

B. ON PIOTR KROPOTKIN’S IDEOLOGY:

On his turn from insurrectionism: see Daniel Guerin’s Anarchism

chapter 3 at:

www.infoshop.org

“Kropotkin deserves credit for being one of the first to confess his

errors and to recognise the sterility of ‘propaganda by the deed.’ In a

series of articles which appeared in 1890 he affirmed ‘that one must be

with the people, who no longer want isolated acts, but want men of

action inside their ranks.’ He warned his readers against ‘the illusion

that one can defeat the coalition of exploiters with a few pounds of

explosives.’ He proposed a return to mass trade unionism like that of

which the First International had been the embryo and propagator:

‘Monster unions embracing millions of proletarians’.”

Kropotkin versus Russian purist “anarcho-communists” [From Black

Flame]Kropotkin [produced] Kleb i Volya for Russian distribution to

combat the “Anarchist Communist” tendency within syndicalism.[i] He

believed revolutionary unions were “absolutely necessary”.[ii][i] Paul

Avrich, The Russian Anarchists pp.54, 61, 63, 84, 107; also see Avrich,

Anarchist Portraits p. 68[ii] Quoted in John Crump, Hatta Shuzo and Pure

Anarchism in Interwar Japan p.10. Contrary to Alain Pengam, it is no

illusion to speak of a syndicalist Kropotkin: Pengam, Anarcho-Communism,

p.249

Kropotkin on organisational dualism: [From Black Flame; for more, see

etc. “Shall We Concern Ourselves with ...”, and Revolutionary

Minorities]“For Kropotkin, it was the ‘party which has made the most

revolutionary propaganda and which has shown the most spirit and daring’

that ‘will be listened to on the day when it is necessary to act, to

march in front in order to realise the revolution’ [i]. He considered it

necessary ‘to plan for the penetration of the masses and their

stimulation by libertarian militants, in much the same way as the

Alliance acted within the International’ [ii]. Rejecting the notion that

the unions were spontaneously revolutionary [and without need of a

specific organisation marching alongside them], Kropotkin argued: ‘there

is need of the other element Malatesta speaks of and which Bakunin

always professed’ [iii]. Malatesta had argued that ‘Bakunin expected a

great deal from the International; yet, at the same time he created the

Alliance, a secret organisation with a well-determined programme —

atheist, socialist, anarchist, revolutionary’ [iv].”[i] P. Kropotkin,

[1880] 1970, “The Spirit of Revolt”, In Kropotkin’s Revolutionary

Pamphlets: a collection of writings by Peter Kropotkin, edited by R.N.

Baldwin. New York: Dover Publications p. 43[ii] Nettlau, A Short History

of Anarchism p. 277, emphasis in the original[iii] Quoted in Ibid. p.

281, emphasis in the original[iv] Quoted in Ibid. p. 130

Kropotkin on the class struggle: from Anarchist Communism: Its Basis

and Principles, 1887,

www.fourmilab.ch

. This text strongly illustrates Kropotkin’s teleological thinking, but

at the same time shows his understanding of class and belief in class

struggle.From An Appeal to the Young,

www.dis.org